This Memorial Day weekend, Alex Cigale saw two of his poems on Americana published in Amherst College’s The Common. His translations of Buryat Russian poet Amarsana Ulzytuev are in the “Eco Literature” feature in the current World Literature Today (May 2014), and his in-depth interview with poet-translator Phil Metres appears in The Conversant.
Do you know what it’s like / when a ghost licks your intestines / Do you know what it’s like / when a rat devours your brain—thus ponders Daniel Borzutzky in his disquieting recent poem, “Dream Song #17.” Read it today at the Poetry Foundation; you won’t regret it.
Asymptote interviewee David Mitchell’s most recent novel, The Bone Clocks, is forthcoming in September from Random House, and reviewers are already abuzz. “Is The Bone Clocks the most ambitious novel ever written, or just the most Mitchell-esque?” Publisher’s Weekly wonders. From the plot summary that follows, could it be… both?
A busy month for Jeremy Tiang, who has stories appearing in Ambit and Meanjin. And look for his translation of Zhang Yueran’s “A Room of One’s Own” in the spring issue of The Iowa Review. Congratulations, Jeremy!
Michael Stein will be a guest participant in the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, taking place from the end of May. Spring in an ancient Bulgarian town, writing, workshopping, and literary readings—what could be better?
In “On Space & Place,” published in Music & Literature, Reif Larsen reviews Visual Edition’s Where You Are, exploring the concept of a map twofold: materially (a box containing sixteen physical booklets), and digitally (the website where-you-are.com). Larsen unpacks the fraught relationship between print and online story space—a fascinating read, especially in relation to our venture here at Asymptote.
Will McGrath’s essay “Forty-One Months” was published in the Bellevue Literary Review (Spring 2014) and awarded the 2014 Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction. Follow his Twitter @wtmcgrath to keep up with his news.